I just wrote the first little poem I've written in something like 4 years or so. In a conversation last week with a new friend, he said that while I am not naive in general, I seem to retain some sort of naivete, that I have not been hardened. Part of me thought "if only he knew..." and another part of me thought he was right. And I wondered at that. I wondered how I am not so bitter or so hardened that I have that look you read about it books. The look that comes along with hard things and tragic things. I've seen it in real-life people and I almost want to have that look in my eye that says I have known the world and I have been through hard things. I think you know the look I am talking about. I think sometimes that it would make me look wise and real and give me some sort of strange street cred or something. I am not someone who has retained thier innocence, though not through my own choices. Maybe that is the key there. I have not lived life in a bubble, I have things that I cannot speak of, so why should it not show? I don't know. Maybe I'm just feeling melodramatic. But I wonder sometimes at how I can seem so soft or a bit innocent or naive when I know the things I know. Knowledge I would never choose to have, but terrible things I must live with. I carry it with me all the time, it's a part of me that I will never lose, it's a wonder it hides so well.